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Show HN: Find the safest well lit walking route between two locations
- Cyber_squad 6y agoColl but how you collect the source of light point in each roads? Are the application actively recording light intensity? Are they coming from open-data?
- tekacs 6y agoFrom the Github page: > For this hackathon we used data about whether a street is lit or not from Open Street Map. Later we could incorporate official UK gov data about street lighting or even incorporate satellite imaging data. It sounds like getting the data right wasn't the focus yet: > Later we could incorporate many other kinds of data such as safe checkpoints trivially. The core technical challenge was wrangling the data and writing our own custom routing algorithm.
- mfbx9da4 6y agoCorrect the primary data source was open street map.
- igjeff 6y agoI'm curious what you're looking for in OSM. I looked at highway=street_lamp and the results were....let's say "sparse".
- Freak_NL 6y agoThe lit-key is used on ways and indicates the lighting of it: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:lit https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:lit The highway=street_lamp tag indicates that there is a lamppost (which can be a navigational aid), but is a much more detailed form of mapping that should be used in addition to the lit-key on the ways themselves.
- maxerickson 6y agoThis is a common pattern for OSM. The tool to use the data helps locate areas where the data isn't complete (say you plan a route through an area you know and it doesn't make sense).
- ilovefood 6y agoVery good job with this. I am working on a similar project and I was wondering if you are planning on hosting your own OSM tiles or using a service (Mapbox is listed, but are you going with that?) ? Thanks!
- ape4 6y agoA route where there are other people is more important than well lit. Eg a busy shopping street vs a well-lit back street.
- dcolkitt 6y agoDepends on the neighborhood. The average open-air drug market in the Tenderloin is dangerous precisely because of how busy it is. Crowds are a decent security by obscurity mechanism, but only if you blend in. If you code as an outsider (e.g. a Japanese tourist in West Philly), then bustle might be a bug not a feature. More potential predators' attention to catch.
- ghaff 6y agoSo many factors play into both subjective and objective safety. This is an interesting project but I'm not sure how you algorithmically encode the route you should probably walk if you're going from the Hilton on O'Farrell to the Moscone.
- usmannk 6y agoThe most direct route (stockton->market->howard) is actually the one I’d take in that case. What do you think it should suggest?
- ghaff 6y agoI guess that actually is a tad shorter--and the preferred route Google Maps gives you. A lot of people would be inclined to cut down to Market though because it seems more direct. (Google does give this as an alternate and the two are basically the same distance.)
- Talanes 6y agoO'Farrel to Market on Mason is definitely more shady than going down Stockton. Not so shady that I've personally felt unsafe, but it's the kind of place I have to step around a dice game on the sidewalk.
- confidantlake 6y agoThat is a great idea! Often I find walking directions put me on busy, unsafe streets, or make me take unsafe crossings. Didn't even think about the well lit part, but that is important as well. Gl with this!
- superimposition 6y agoDitto. Additionally, Google Maps makes me try to cross streets that technically shouldn't be crossed by pedestrians.
- ISL 6y agoGoogle Maps has functionality for reporting problems. I've done the same when it suggested an unsafe bicycle street-crossing and they updated the routing.
- Triv888 6y agoGoogle sure loves free employees...
- thesimon 6y agoAs long as I don't have to pay obscene amounts for navigation, especially in the car, I don't mind.
- Triv888 6y agoIn my Mazda, I only had to buy a $30 SD card from Ebay to make navigation functional
- capableweb 6y agoIf I were you, I would stop buying random SD cards from the internet and connect to my devices, especially things like my car.
- petermcneeley 6y ago"For fear of his yasa and punishment his followers were so well disciplined that during his reign no traveller, so long as he was near his army, had need of guard or patrol on any stretch of road ; and, as is said by way of hyperbole, a woman with a golden vessel on her head might walk alone without fear or dread." https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3x0ae1/was_there_actually_a_saying_during_the_pax/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3x0ae1/was_t...
- Gys 6y agoInteresting, especially when usage patterns emerge. I wonder for which countries, cities and neighborhoods this ends up being used mostly. I guess usage relates to safety.
- realjohng 6y agoGreat idea. I can certainly relate to the feeling of thinking "this is sketch" while following a google map route. Google should just build this feature in.
- dharmab 6y agoMicrosoft patented the feature (but has not implemented it, AFAIK). http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,090,532.PN.&OS=PN/8,090,532&RS=PN/8,090,532 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
- rafram 6y agoWow, reading patents sucks. A quick read of the text would lead you to believe (incorrectly, I think) that the patent is for any system which provides different routes to pedestrians than to cars. They skirt around defining exactly what they’d like to protect.
- _jahh 6y agoWhat I would even more like to see is municipal governments use this sort of a tool to identify areas for improvement.
- ebg13 6y agoNice idea and implementation! In case you plan to move this from hackathon experiment to real product, to me the second letter in the logo splash (first image in the readme) looks like an "l" instead of the "r" that it's supposed to be. So I first read it as "BlightPath" which is probably not desired.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoWould be more useful to map based on reported muggings and pedestrian-car collisions, since that’s what you’re actually trying to avoid and we have really good data for them. But previous attempts to build similar apps have been shut down as “racist.”
- jhowell 6y agoUse technology to protect users from walking down streets populated by people negatively impacted by socioeconomic conditions (poverty, mental health, food insecurity), or use technology to bring awareness and compassion to the most vulnerable.
- lainga 6y agoAre you implying an exclusive-or?
- civilized 6y agoBelieve it or not, it is possible to both have compassion for those in poverty, struggling with mental health issues, etc. AND want to avoid being mugged. Only a ridiculously privileged and sheltered person would think these things are somehow mutually exclusive. I can hear all the hardworking immigrants in rough neighborhoods rolling their eyes. I don't understand why some people talk as if compassion entails complete vulnerability. Seems like a lot of grandstanding.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoNothing does social justice like getting mugged.
- Ecstatify 6y agoIt’s in Show HN. The person built a tool that could be genuinely useful to some people. You go build your social project and stop shittin’ on other people’s projects.
- fouric 6y agoHow is your comment at all related to the linked project? It literally just attempts to determine how brightly-lit the physical area is and uses that to plan a walking route.
- spicybright 6y agoEh, it's not bad, but phones are so distracting while walking. I use walking directions sometimes and it's like wearing blinders to an extent. You need all your senses in focus if you really want to be safe while walking somewhere unfamiliar.
- leetcrew 6y agoideally you would have your route committed to memory before starting the walk. still, it's better to whip out your phone every few blocks than to accidentally walk through a place you didn't intend to.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoWalking directions with a smart watch is so much more convenient. When I am coming up to a turn it taps my wrist and a quick look at my watch shows an arrow with the way I need to go.
- uoaei 6y agoThis gives me the same strong negative impression as the Citizen and Nextdoor apps. The idea makes sense in some abstract theoretical way, but in practice this will simply reflect the biases of users by representing the subjective "sketchiness" of (typically) poorer areas, leading to gentrified travel routes that siphon yet more business away from communities who could really use it.
- qorrect 6y ago"gentrified travel routes that siphon yet more business away from communities who could really use it" <- that made my day kudos.
- celim307 6y agoI don’t doubt that happens but the flip side is that in my area the food trucks and mom and pop locations have been getting a big boost from people in the neighboring gentrified neighborhood giving them shout outs or sharing job opportunities. My neighbor has started selling her mother’s tamales starting on next door and now has enough business to stop working in an Amazon warehouse. My area is probably not representative of most Nextdoor communities however
- uoaei 6y agoThat's awesome! I am only speaking out because I get the sense from this community (and having worked in the tech industry for long enough) that such externalities are not really considered when designing apps like this one. The other comments give a hint to the proportion of time that these concerns and issues are discussed. I see all the time only the consideration of "could" without any regard for "should".
- floren 6y agoIt is currently using openstreetmap data to determine if a street is lit or not. There is no user feedback declaring a place "sketchy".
- uoaei 6y ago
- ilyas121 6y agoWhere does the data come from for defining sketch areas?
- no-dr-onboard 6y agoOoh, what an excellent question. Is the data crowdsourced, if so, by whom? What defines sketchy areas _besides crime_. What an excellent opportunity for consistency by certain worldviews.
- Solocomplex 6y agoImagine the shit storm if Google made "safe" paths.
- maxerickson 6y agoThey probably do, even just by factoring in how popular segments are. I agree there would be a shit storm if they labeled certain paths as safer though.
- DavidPeiffer 6y agoMicrosoft has a patent issued in 2012 for this very topic...and as you predicted, there were many news articles and questions about ethics brought up. [1] Given the market share Google Maps has, the economic fallout from them suddenly avoiding certain areas deemed "unsafe" could swing billions of dollars annually from one set of businesses to another. [1] https://www.npr.org/2012/01/25/145337346/this-app-was-made-for-walking-but-is-it-racist https://www.npr.org/2012/01/25/145337346/this-app-was-made-f...
- walshemj 6y ago@bestofnextdoor More seriously there are some serious ethical concerns people are missing here.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoWouldn’t a crime heatmap be more than sufficient?
- smurf_t 6y agoI have attended a talk of a team who built something similar few years ago, it might be interesting for you http://goodcitylife.org/happymaps/index.php http://goodcitylife.org/happymaps/index.php
- pimlottc 6y agoA similar idea I’ve often thought about would be a route planner than finds the path with the most shade on hot days. You’d have to take topography and building heights into account, along with the time of day. Weather is a factor too - overcast skies? Great! Would be an interesting problem to work on.
- Moru 6y agoThere was an app a while back that could tell you if the café's outdoor tables were sunlit or not, taking sun angle and buildings into account. But this is Sweden, it's not hot enough to stay out of the sun anyway. To be able to sit outdoors, you want the sun most of the time. :-)
- 0x008 6y agoI wonder how you would define a proper loss function for this? You probably need to optimize distance versus “sketchyness”. How would one go about that? Also every user probably has a different feeling about how much sketch they will endure to save a couple minutes walking distance.
- underyx 6y agoHeya, congrats on getting on the HN front page! I'm Bence, one of the judges from hack.travel, where I believe this project originated. (Note for bystanders: the project got first place at that hackathon.) I wonder what's been up with the project and why the sudden activity? Have you been doing anything cool behind the scenes?
- mfbx9da4 6y agolol no and thanks! I recently posted an email validator I built about a year ago with not much thought https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440220 Today, I noticed my github stars went through the roof on that repo so I thought I should probably post some of my other repos too!
- karussell 6y agoKudos - well done :) If you still like the topic of path finding you can checkout GraphHopper - we always look for contributors :)
- peterburkimsher 6y agoGraphHopper is great, especially for Map Matching. The IoT startup I work for in New Zealand was struggling with fuzzy-matching routes with Google Maps and ESRI. When I tried GraphHopper, it gave excellent results, and when I had more questions, email replies were extremely punctual. Another friend in Germany is using GraphHopper for some research on tram lines. So just to echo what karussell says: GraphHopper seem like a great team, with wonderful tech and friendly people. So if you have an interest in maps, it's worth chatting to them!
- Vinnl 6y agoQuestion: I solve quests in StreetComplete [1], and one of the things it asks me is whether a stretch of way is lit. Sometimes, these stretches can be very short (like 1m), e.g. at intersections. I typically only mark those as lit if there's a streetlamp directly on it - so if there's not, I'll mark it as unlit even though nearby streetlamps do shine on it. Is that the right thing to do? [1] https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete
- zamadatix 6y agoIf the question asks "is it lit" I'd respond based on if it was normally lit in some way at night or not. Where streetlamps are is a separate question that can only imply if a section is normally lit or not.
- maxerickson 6y agoI think the right interpretation of the question is whether there is lighting in the area rather than whether there is lighting immediately adjacent. I guess there's still some subjectivity in that interpretation. But given that lights can be directly mapped, I think capturing whether there is lighting on the segment is a sensible way to do the quest. If you want, I can help you find the ones you already marked, just send me an email.
- Vinnl 6y agoThat'd be great! Sent you an email.
- secfirstmd 6y agoHeld up at gunpoint twice! America is so weird. So many friends of mine in the US have been held up.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoI’m Australian and have never even heard of someone I know being robbed in person ever, let alone with a weapon. Is this actually a common occurrence in America? How do people put up with this?
- gradstudent 6y agoFrom the description of the backend: > Clean geojson to remove dark pathways. Doesn't this eliminate routes with tradeoffs? e.g., cutting through a small park or alleyway may not be so risky (the other end is visible, both ends are well lit) while the alternative route may be very long in comparison?
- cbdumas 6y agoThis is cool, however there is an implicit assertion here that better lit = safer. As far as I can tell this is questionable at best, a decent roundup of studies can be found here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/02/what-actually-happens-to-crime-when-the-lights-are-on-as-rick-perry-suggests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/02/what-...
- karussell 6y agoThanks a lot for pointing this out. Probably it is also about perceived safety :)
- aaron695 6y agoIsaac Asimov did an interesting short article on the full moon and increased crime. He concludes crime goes up because we have a connection to the full moon rather than the extra lighting. His article was written decades ago. I suspect today he'd change that idea given the better data available. Personally I think adding lighting to cities makes personal safety far better. I get what the studies are doing but I think they are relying on novelty to get published over boring. But certainly you have to watch putting someone down a well-lit underpass over crossing a not so well-lit busy road. I think the value to the data is for councils to find where lighting should be improved. Plus there's also more to safety than just crime.
- adamjb 6y agoAll the studies mentioned seem to focus on total crimes and not crimes per trip. I wonder if the (lack of) effect they observe is because of increased lighting leading to increased trips which leads to more crimes just because there are more people, cancelling out or negating any increased safety per trip.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoMore likely that more trips means more lighting. Municipalities don't tend to spend the bucks lighting places with low traffic.
- karussell 6y agoIn a team at a hackathon I implemented a similar thing (safe way to school) with GraphHopper: https://github.com/karussell/nordhopper https://github.com/karussell/nordhopper (Disclaimer: I'm one of the GraphHopper devs) There is no mobile app only a simple web app. But we also considered crash data from the German government which could be important. Additionally with GraphHopper walking routes avoid bigger streets and consider many signals from OpenStreetMap data. My personal route would probably just to avoid some dark parks to be honest as every detour is ugly. And so a nice feature is the customizable routing where you can change your preferences per request because it is not clear if a longer detour along lamps is really safer if it is twice the length and at which point your personal preferences are or how you wish to mix other signals into the cost function of the route. Check out the next release soon that will get a heavily improved customization feature: https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/pull/2209 https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/pull/2209
- mac-chaffee 6y agoThis is the first time I've seen a .geojson file and I was surprised to see Github actually renders it on a map: https://github.com/mfbx9da4/brightpath-backend/blob/b0f5f1c31705785524f7f4c6219d12e29264e9ef/data/central.geojson https://github.com/mfbx9da4/brightpath-backend/blob/b0f5f1c3...
- mfbx9da4 6y agoOh so cool! Didn't even see that myself on github!
- pc86 6y ago> 3. Clean geojson to remove dark pathways. I sort of expected this to be the "draw the rest of the owl" step, but apparently "Lit" is actually a property of the geojson data! Very interesting.
- neilv 6y agoOut of several thousand hours (close to 10K?) of late-night walking in urban areas (such as from working into the wee hours, then walking home all the way across town), I've been held up at gunpoint twice, discouraged or thwarted countless other approaches by muggers, and several times had bottles thrown at me. Two of the locations that were memorably the most dangerous-seeming were some of the best-lit, and they weren't lit because they were high-crime. Some other factors to consider in what's safe and/or feels safe: * The presence of houses on the sidewalk (with people in them who might hear you, and doors you could go bang on), even if the street is dark except for the occasional porch light or glow through the drapes. * Presence of open businesses (restaurants, hotels, cafes, hospitals, donut shops), which are pretty obviously places you can run into, where there will be other people. * On the other side of open businesses being good... people outside of nightlife businesses can be risky, and sometimes feel risky. (Usually innocuous here, but walk enough, and you'll eventually encounter drunk people looking to fight, and also see people looking to prey upon someone from the concentration of candidates out late at night. And you'll read news reports of criminal score-settling with gunshots, outside some of the bars/clubs you walk past every night.) * Office buildings with visible security guard desk in the lobby. In practice, I think they could only phone the police while you're getting stabbed against their glass wall, but the witness will discourage some attackers, and it seemed much more reassuring than an empty skyscraper lobby on a completely deserted downtown street. * Possibly: Unlocked lobby/vestibule front doors of apartment buildings, which aren't obviously reassuring like an open business with people inside, but (if you paired this info with tips) can be used by walkers to thwart attackers. * Street crime data. (I should add that I'm white and male, and I know other groups of people face additional threats on the street, but I don't know how my experience applies to that.)
- abcxjeb284 6y agoExcellent points, I’d add the counterintuitive: * Pedestrian traffic - busier streets with more people mean less likely to be mugged vs the empty side street.
- xavierlint 6y agoIt's counterintuitive for a reason, and to be honest I have bad (not necessarily direct) experiences in both cases, and can't conclude which one is the best. Does a busier street really mean less likely to be mugged? Why?
- Razengan 6y agoIt'd be nice to see a list of the few places in the world where it's generally safe to walk alone at night, with your iPhone out and everything. I can only think of Singapore and Japan, along with maybe some parts of Europe.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoI have literally never felt unsafe at night in south Australia.
- fy20 6y agoSame here in Eastern Europe. The whole topic and comments make me think "wait, people live like that, I thought that just happened in movies". I wouldn't have any concerns if my wife and kid walked around any streets in my city, even at 3am.
- bigspider421 6y agoThere's also a direct correlation between homeless presence & crime. Are there any available APIs for mapping encampment locations? Living in Californian cities I've come to realize that homelessness should be illegal.
- dusted 6y agoIt says a lot about a society that people even think along those lines. I often take a walk in the night, it feels nice, surrounded by darkness in the cool night, looking at the stars, listening to the animals scrambling around in the fields and ditches.